


The Things Left Unsaid

by crescentstrife



Series: Sefikura Week 2021 [6]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Angst, Anguished Confession of Love, But Kinda A Fix-it, Dark Ending, Depression, Grief/Mourning, Hanahaki Disease, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mental Breakdown, Not A Fix-It, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Sefikura Week, Sefikura Week 2021, Self-Harm, Suicide, Tragedy, Unrequited Love, do not read if sensitive, prompt: hanahaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28993581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crescentstrife/pseuds/crescentstrife
Summary: Sefikura Week 2021 Day 6 - HanahakiBecause they say it is the greatest act of love to die for another. And while Sephiroth knows nothing of love, death is something he is intimately familiar with.A dark version of a Nibelheim fix-it fic.
Relationships: Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Series: Sefikura Week 2021 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2122833
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40
Collections: Sefikura (Sephiroth/Cloud) Week - Yearly Event





	The Things Left Unsaid

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the tags for the requisite warnings. 
> 
> Major trigger warning is suicide and very dark and destructive thoughts. I wrote this when I was in a dark place, and found it therapeutic, but it may not be so for others. Please take care of yourself and do not read if this type of content is triggering for you. 
> 
> And if you are struggling, please reach out to someone. You matter and you are important. 
> 
> https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

He had made the choice easily, instinctually, like breathing, like blinking, like waking.

It hurt, at first, the stinging in his wrists and in his abdomen lightning up his whole body, crackling through his mind. But there had been a twisted relief in that anguish, because for the first time in months, his chest did not feel like it was going to burst open, and his throat did not cut with the sharpness of the thorns. Instead, the last flowers that emerged did so more smoothly, almost painlessly, as if the blood seeping out of him now had dragged out with it the final vestiges of his pain.

Absently, Sephiroth reaches for a petal of one such flower now, the weakness in his fingers barely registering in some tiny corner of his mind. When he did cough up roses, they were always white, but these petals are now painted red by his own blood. It is almost a laughable sight. If they had been truly red, the symbol of love, perhaps things would be different. Perhaps the paths that he had left to choose from would have been less crooked, less treacherous, and perhaps he would have allowed himself to hope for a different life.

Or perhaps not. After all, Sephiroth never learned the right words to say, the right actions to take to express his feelings, let alone understand them properly, because he had been trained since birth to believe himself incapable of feeling at all. And yet, the moment Sephiroth saw Cloud Strife and looked into those brilliant blue eyes, the impossible sentiments began to stir within him. They grew, unremitting and unforgiving, with each fleeting moment he shared with the blond, with each accidental touch, each passing glance into those eyes. They had spent relatively little time alone together – usually, Zack Fair would be with them, watching their interactions with a cautious and knowing gaze. But the brief words exchanged, the occasional meals shared at Zack’s apartment, the handful of impromptu training sessions – each second added to an inexorable pressure in his heart that rendered even breathing difficult. But even then, Sephiroth still did not understand, had not the proper experience or vocabulary to name what was happening to him, what was stirring in his chest.

Not until the flowers began their relentless march up his throat.

And then, it became momentously clear. He had seen the effects of hanahaki disease before, watched it nearly rip Angeal apart as the man agonized over his feelings for Genesis. In the end, those feelings had been Angeal’s downfall, motivating him to follow a man who had lost his heart to anger and betrayal and rage, until he could not follow anymore. From that example, Sephiroth knew, as soon as he clutched his own spit-covered petals in his hands, what message they meant to carry, what truth they told, and what fate they had assigned him.

Somehow, someway, he had fallen in love with Cloud Strife. And because Sephiroth knows no other way to express those thoughts than through the edge of his sword, it would most certainly be the death of him.

And thus, it this denouement feels inevitable.

The basement library is cold and damp and growing even colder. The lone ceiling light sways above him, flickering from years of disuse. On the shelves, the books begin to blur, the titles on their spines now indecipherable. And on the ground, Sephiroth sits, his famous sword resting beside him, the silver edge mixed with red. The stone floor beneath him is littered with his petals, stained with his blood. All there is now is to await the fate he had chosen, walk to the end of the path selected from the crossroads that had unfurled itself to Sephiroth when the truth of his existence was finally revealed.

Because if Genesis’s poisonous words in that reactor were correct, if the records and books housed in this abandoned corner of Nibelheim were to be believed – then there remained only two destinies for him. Sephiroth could give into the soft whispering in his mind, cajoling him to fulfill a fate of catastrophe and calamity, promising him a demon mother’s love and an ascended existence free from the shackles that fettered him to this painful human life. It had been such a lovely thought, and for a moment, he had almost allowed himself to make that choice.

But then, the consequences of what that decision would mean for the only thing his heart truly yearned for wrenched in his chest with another coughing spell. The petals that he choked up afterward, that were then strewn on the wooden table amongst the pages of the open books, were yellow like Cloud’s hair, like the sunshine of a bright and beautiful day. All at once, the horror of crushing a world capable of crafting such perfection wrecked through Sephiroth’s body. With that recognition and its impending implications, he had stumbled backward, collapsed on the floor against the closest bookshelf, and sobbed, freely and openly, in a manner he had not been able to since he was a child.

He found then that he could not fathom it, the utter destruction the voice in his head demanded. This was the town that Cloud grew up in, that his mother lived in. Sephiroth had destroyed before, villages and homes, an entire nation, and yet, this was something he felt he lacked the requisite will to execute. The realization ran counter to every instinct for death he had been schooled in since youth, the dissonance threatening to split his mind and his heart in half. He wanted to say no. He needed to. And yet, Sephiroth knew, despite the wild beating in his heart, that he could not resist the darkness now crawling inside him for long.

But then, it clicked. There was an easy way to resolve the conflict, one that would both free him from this pain, and that would allow him to render his feelings true and real, in the only way Sephiroth knew how.

Because they say it is the greatest act of love to die for another. And while Sephiroth knows nothing of love, death is something he is intimately familiar with.

He can feel the old friend coming for him now, surrounding him like angel’s wings with a foreign and dangerous warmth. The light above him becomes hazier, his breathing slower and calmer, the flower petals in his fingers lighter and redder. It is time. Sephiroth summons every last bit of his strength to his mind, to imagine the lightness of Cloud’s hair, the vividness of Cloud’s eyes, the softness of Cloud’s skin, because he knows Cloud is the last thing he wants to feel before the end.

And yet, the thought of never bearing witness to such sweetness again manages to bring back some semblance of the old pain. A familiar tightness in his chest begins to build. The air feels too tight in his throat, like choking, like drowning, except now, the frantic rush and fear that normally accompanied such episodes eludes him. Curiously, some part of Sephiroth still clinging on recognizes that what lodges in his body does not feel like flower petals. Instead, it feels like words, heavy with regret and with sorrow, thrashing out against the inevitable darkness that threatens to seal them away. He knows what words they are too – because they are exactly what Sephiroth had thought he would never understand, what he believed he would never be able to say. Until this, his final moment.

There is no one to hear him now. With one last breath, one last tear, he lets go.

“I love you.”

\---

When Zack and Cloud find Sephiroth – or more accurately, his body – the blood has dried the flower petals around the man to the point that they are brittle to the touch. It takes some time for them to register what had happened, but the traces of hanahaki, the slit-open wrists, the stab wound in the stomach, the dirtied edge of Masamune – they all say what needs to be said.

It is what remains unspoken, unheard that matters. But now, it is too late.

Cloud kneels down, strokes the cold skin of that perfect face, brushes back errant strands of silver hair with tender fingers.

“He never said anything,” he whispers, his hands shaking. “I thought—I thought…”

Zack closes his eyes. “Cloud, I am so sorry.”

And that is enough. Cloud buries his head into the crook of that shoulder and begins to weep, for all the things left unsaid.

**Author's Note:**

> We now end day 6 of Sefikura Week. Almost at the end!


End file.
